Garden chores morning

Mother's day was a mixture of morning vegging out in my PJ's and an afternoon of cleaning up and planting some big containers. I got all the big containers prepped and transplanted 6 plum tomatoes in them and saved the biggest container for an egpplant that I planted yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday was an out and about day - osteo treatment, lunch out, some pickup grocery shopping and a quick Walmart stop for some more potting mix and a couple of veggie starts and a new Peace rose to replace one of the roses that died this winter. I was wiped after the osteo and shopping and didn't get around to weeding and mulching the strawberry bed and knoll, so I'll try to get that done later this morning before the expected isolated thunderstorms arrive early afternoon. I still have whatever bug/allergies/cold hanging on which is probably also accounting for my low energy and scratchy throat at the moment.

Many of the seeds I planted just a few days ago have sprouted, so they're getting moved to the front porch this morning. None of the South American peppers or the one New Mexican pepper have sprouted yet even though I warmly wrapped the pots to get them a bit warmer than our 72degree room temperature. Other peppers I started came up fine last month without the added protection, so I'm starting to think that maybe I was sold some old seed. :-(

Time to chug down a bunch of vitamins and start moving seedlings to the their new temporary home on the front porch.

Seedlings

Here are some of my seedlings. Two other large flats and six packs of tomatoes, peppers, etc are still living in the house but since it's going to be in the 80's today, I may put some of them out later this morning to harden them off a bit.   In another week or two they'll probably have to get put into bigger peat pots. Yesterday afternoon, I bought the last package of them at Walmart and I'm hoping that they'll have more in a few days because I have a very large amount of seedlings that will soon be outgrowing those little peat pots.

It took me longer to get the rototiller going and till one bed the other day and yesterday I manged to plant all the broccoli and cabbage, prune the climbing roses and do a bit more weeding and cleanup. Today I'll plant the broccoli raab, kale and some onions in that bed. The compost pile has two nice, volunteer kale plants which I'll dig up and transplant. I love those compost volunteers. They are always the healthiest, best looking veggies!

My energy is still  low - wonder if it's because I'm 70 or just out of gardening shape this early in the season! Either way, after a couple of hours of hard planting and working in the sun, I'm wiped. Three years ago 6 hours in the garden was the norm on a good day.

Unless there's a rainy day in the next few days, the studio is just going to have to wait until I finish the current planting and prep more beds for potato planting. This year I'm planting 5 varieties - Red Pontiac, Kennebec,  German butterball, Yellow Finn, and Bintji and this time I'm going to mark the rows so I don't wind up with a couple of bushes on unknown varieties! 

Snow covered morning

We got just enough snow to be pretty and only a minor inconvenience. Jim shoveled the walkways so our little dogs could get to their first morning outing without too much discomfort, and he cleared an area where he puts out the bird food every morning. The birds just dove into the food without the usual bickering and territorial behavior they usually engage in. I guess they were too cold and too hungry to waste energy on anything but feeding!

I had to cancel my doctors appointment in Burnsville this morning. The roads haven't been cleared yet and we're not seeing any car traffic yet, so the road may be a mess.

Yesterday I took a break from the studio since I had to start tomato and pepper seeds. I also had a lot of seedling transplanting to do. The kale, basil, and some perennials are now in larger peat pots with potting soil replacing the seed starting mix they were in. This morning I'll be transplanting the cool weather veggies which are definitely pot bound in those tiny containers. I also have some annual flower seedlings (snapdragons and lobelias) which are ready for transplanting as well.

My studio time will be a continuation of batching glazes for the cone 6 soda, test firing in John Britt's new, soda, test kiln.. I have 29 tiles done so far and have more to go.

Doesn't look like any of our construction crew will be here this morning. One has already canceled and I know two of them live at much higher elevations which got a lot more snow than we have here.

Till later,
June